Month: December 2014

Let me preface this post by saying I had no intent on writing this seven minutes ago.

Seven minutes ago, I had decided not to start Benjamin Button at 1:00 am and go to sleep for once instead of making it through until daylight. I had set my laptop under my bed to resist temptation, checked my phone to make sure my alarm was on for the morning, and all of the sudden, I realized I hadn’t written of my personal struggles with the holidays. And it’s very important to me that I do write of it, because I know I’m not alone.

Death is inevitable, and the people that avoid it and ignore it are just timid and not sure of what to think about it.

I’ve known since I was about five years old what it means to lose someone, as I lost my first dog around that time. It wasn’t easy for me at all. I went into therapy as a kindergartener until I was ten years old to deal with the death of my beloved pet.

At that time, all I understood was that she was there in the morning, and gone that night. But it wasn’t a light blow to my heart to have her gone, it was a piercing stab in my entire body to lose someone who I had grown with, who I had cherished and loved.

I wrote out this whole post, and it deleted. I am shaking with anger, but I will rewrite it just for you, kids.

I have a special relationship with my hair.

Alright, calm down. Quit rolling your eyes, and listen. Everyone has a feature that they get OCD about, and for me, it’s my hair. Since I was little, my hair has been sacred to me. We’ve had our ups and downs, but it’s been my form of self-expression. Continue reading “Fifty Stages of Maggie’s Hair”→

It’s absolutely unavoidable. I couldn’t tell anyone that their families would stop fighting, because a lot of the time, they won’t. And, it’s assumed that I’m referring to couples, but I’m also referring to siblings, siblings and parents, siblings and yourself. Everyone pushes each other’s buttons, especially my family.

There’s a silence upstairs, I’ve been listening to my parents argue with my oldest brother for the past hour. It’s harsh, it’s irrational. Luckily, fights with my parents like this happen once every year or so. I don’t think I could handle this grueling sit-down every night like he does. Continue reading “Families That Fight”→

Being a filmmaker, the most amazing point in the whole process is when it finally starts to come together. This can be within a day of shooting, when you see all the footage, when the soundtrack is added, when you finish the project after putting your everything into it.

Trust me, I’m no professional. But when I sit back after hunching over a screen for four hours straight and start to see something come out of what I’ve been working on, the most satisfying wave of euphoria washes over me. This moment usually happens when the music is added, as I am a complete buff for soundtracks and film scoring.

Sometimes I wonder about what makes me happy, but when I’m in that spot of success in my filmmaking, I know exactly what makes me happy. It’s what I hunger for, to film, to hold a camera and just know that it’s me giving it the power to capture.